


How To Feed Your Zombie

by decadent_mousse



Series: Zombie Summoning 101 [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood, Blood Magic, Gore, Hermann does not know what he is doing, Humor, M/M, Newt only slightly knows what he is doing, Pre-Relationship, Vomit, Zombies, eye gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 10:11:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5123738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decadent_mousse/pseuds/decadent_mousse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermann accidentally summons a zombie.  Necromancy isn't his strong suit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Feed Your Zombie

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to get this done in time for Halloween but didn't quite make it because of Halloween shenanigans. But here it is!

Hermann looked at the supplies he had spread out on the table in front of him.  He had a bowl, he had a knife, he had a canister of Dead Sea salt he’d bought from the local Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  He had the book, of course, because he knew well enough to know making a mistake while reciting the incantation would, at best, cause the spell to fail entirely or, at worst, would get him killed.    
  
He picked up the salt and took one last look at the page entailing the creation of wards and protective barriers.  He'd never summoned anything before -- he'd certainly never had to worry about _containing_  something before.  It seemed straightforward enough.    
  
He walked around to the other side of the table and carefully began forming a circle of salt on the floor.  He was glad, then, that he had hardwood and not carpeting.  It made it easier to ensure the line was solid all around and it would be considerably easier to clean up afterwards.  He made it thick, just to be sure it'd hold up when magical forces began to surge around it.  
  
Back at the table, he was ready to begin.  He picked up the knife.  He ran the blade across the palm of his left hand with a wince and let the blood drip freely into the bowl.  It hurt, of course, but necromancy required blood -- all the literature he had read had been very clear on that point.  

Once the bowl was filled with a moderate amount of blood, he wrapped his hand in a strip of a bedsheet he'd sacrificed for the occasion.  He'd clean it up properly later.  He needed to get this done while the blood was still fresh.  
  
He dipped his fingers into the warm liquid, feeling vaguely unsettled by the sensation.  He flung blood over the table and into the circle.  He looked down at the book.  He took a deep breath.  

"Surge es de sepulchro tuo, pecus inferos."  
  
He slung more blood.  It occurred to him that the blood would be harder to clean up than the salt.  He should have put plastic over the floor and worked on top of it, but it was too late to worry about it now.  
  
"Surgite et carnibus meis convivium."  
  
More blood.  He heard a strange hissing noise and glanced up from the book.  The splashes of blood were sizzling on the floor.  He hesitated a moment before continuing.  
  
"Surgensque percusserit omnes adversantes mihi corda timores."  
  
He picked up the book and the bowl and walked around to the side of the circle.  He tilted the bowl and slung the rest of the blood.  
  
"Egredimini tenebricosum servum et reviviscant!"  
  
The blood was bubbling and _writhing_ now, and Hermann took a step back.  The blood spread across the floor and blackened, and a shape moved within it.  It surged upward and hands grabbed at the floor, some entity seeking to pull itself up out of the portal Hermann had opened.

It was too late to be having second thoughts, but he was nonetheless having them anyway.    
  
The creature's shape became more distinct as it pulled itself up out of the floor.  It was still largely covered in the black tarry substance his spell had created, but here and there Hermann caught glimpses of putrescent grey-green flesh.  After what seemed like a bit of a struggle for it, it finally rose up off the floor, standing, and the lingering dark blood rippled and shrunk in on itself.  It looked like it was being absorbed into the creature's skin, and Hermann was finally able to take a clear look at it.  
  
It was short for an undead abomination.  Though he hadn't been exactly sure what to expect.  The spell itself was vague about the type of undead it was intended to summon, and there were so many possibilities.  Hermann had hoped, somewhat optimistically, that he'd end up with something a little bigger and with more limbs and sharp teeth. Something that would legitimately strike fear in the hearts of anyone who might consider doing him harm.  A protector.  
  
What he'd gotten, as far as he could tell, was a zombie, and not a particularly well-preserved one at that.  
  
Its clothing -- which he supposed he should be grateful it had any of at all -- was tattered.  Its arms were covered in patterns of dull colors that were only slightly distinguishable from the rest of its grey-green flesh.  It wore a pair of cracked glasses that it couldn't possibly see effectively out of.  It also had a nasty gash on its head that was slowly oozing some combination of blood and pus and the skin was peeling away from its skull a bit around it.  
  
Hermann stared, transfixed, feeling a combination of nausea and regret.  Even he knew that a lone zombie wasn't much of a threat, and certainly of limited use as a scare tactic.  
  
The zombie turned its head and _looked_  at him.  
  
"Uh, hi."  
  
Hermann gaped at it.  Were zombies supposed to be able to speak?  
  
"Do you think you could maybe let me out of here?  Kind of hard to do your bidding if you keep me caged, dude.”

Hermann continued to gape.

The zombie started to look a bit nervous, blinking at him with eyes that were just a shade greener than his skin.  “This wasn’t-- you didn’t _accidentally_ summon me, right?  I mean, there’s a circle, there’s blood…  You definitely summoned me on purpose.  Right?”

“Yes.  Yes, I did.”

The zombie let out a huff of relief.  “Oh, okay, good.  Good.  You kinda had me worried for a minute there.  Who do you want me to eat?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Y’know, who do you want me to eat?  There’s gotta be someone.”

“I don’t want you to _eat_  anyone!”

“Okay, no eating.  Who do you want me to kill?”

Hermann pinched the bridge of his nose.  “I don’t want you to _kill_  anyone, either.”

“Oh man, please tell me this isn’t another manual labor thing.  You aren’t going to use me as the part of some zombie workforce to put together some kinda tower or fortress or something, are you?”

“What?  No!”

“Dude, I’m running out of bullet points on my list of things people raise zombies for.  Throw me a bone.”

"I require protection," Hermann explained.  "I'm on rather tense terms with a colleague and I have reason to believe the situation may... escalate."

"Escalate how?"

The zombie crossed his arms over his chest and looked at him in interest.  This was all very unexpected.  Hermann hadn't foreseen having to try to explain this to anyone -- much less a zombie.

"He made threats."

" _Death_  threats?"

Hermann nodded.

"Well, are you sure he'd really follow through?  Plenty of people talk the talk but don't walk the walk."

"I think after thirty-seven years I know my father well enough to know when he's being serious."

The zombie gawked at him incredulously.  "Your-- okay, you're going to have to explain this to me, because--"

"I don't _have_   _to_ do any such thing.  I summoned you for defensive purposes, not so I'd have someone's shoulder to cry on."

"You could, if you want."

"What?"

“Cry on my shoulder.”  The zombie grinned brightly and had the gall to _wink_ at him.  It might have been slightly more effective if his eyelid didn’t briefly get stuck in the process.

Hermann narrowed his eyes.  

"You _really_ need to lighten up, dude.  We're in this together, you know?  What's your name?  I'm Newt."

"What kind of name is Newt?"

" _Mine_ ," Newt retorted.  "Now it's your turn."

"Hermann Gottlieb."

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Are you going to talk this much for the duration of your stay here?"

"Probably."

He sighed and stepped toward the circle.  He gave it a considering look before using his cane to break the line of salt.  He could feel the surge of power as the barrier went down, and hoped he hasn't just condemned himself to getting eaten by a zombie.

"Finally," Newt huffed, stepping out of the circle.  "I was beginning to think you were just gonna leave me in there until you needed me to kill someone."

"I don't--"

The zombie held up his hands.  "I know, I know, no killing.  ‘Defending.’  Whatever.  I'm just glad to be out of there, dude.  Breathing fresh air..."

"You don't breathe."

"It's a figure of speech, Hermann.  Are you always this cranky?”

“Only when I’m bleeding profusely.”

Newt peered at his hand curiously.  “You should put something on that before it gets infected.”

“Thank you,” Hermann replied dryly.  “I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

Newt rolled his eyes at that.  “Well _excuse me_ for--”  He cut himself off abruptly when he seemed to realize one of his eyeballs had gotten stuck.  “Crap, hold on.”

He took off his glasses, which make a wet noise as they came away from his face, and some sort of mucus-like slime stretched between them and the indentations they’d left on his skin before pulling loose and dangling off the edges of his glasses like snot.  It was disgusting, and sufficiently disturbing that it almost distracted him from the bloodshot eye that was still rolled back in his skull.  The zombie smacked the side of the head in a maneuver that would have been mildly entertaining when performed on a tv but looked a bit odd when done to a human -- albeit a dead one’s -- head.

It wasn’t haven’t the desired effect.

“Uh, where’s your kitchen?”

“Towards the back of the house, through the archway in the living room.  Wh--”

Before he could finish getting the words out, Newt was off in the direction of the kitchen, and Hermann was storming after him.  The absolute last thing he wanted was a rotting corpse in the same place where he kept and prepared his food.  

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

“I need a spoon.”

The zombie was already rifling through Hermann’s drawer of utensils by the time he caught up with him.

“For wh--”

The creature had a bad habit of not letting Hermann finish his sentences before interrupting him, running off, or jamming the end of a spoon into his eye socket.  

Hermann made a strangled noise and covered his face, though he’d already seen more than enough tonight to give him nightmares for _months_.

“What are you _doing_?”

“Dude, chill out.”  There was a wet, squelching noise.  “I’m trying to get my eye unstuck, what do you think I’m doing?”

He was never going to be able to use that spoon for anything else ever again.  He was going to have to throw it away, or melt it down, or--

“Aha!” Newt exclaimed, so loudly Hermann only faintly heard the victorious plop that presumably meant he had been successful.  “Phew, that kinda freaked me out.”

He cautiously pulled his hand away from his face.  The spoon was covered in what he could only loosely describe at this point as “zombie goo” and was most definitely a lost cause.  No amount of dish soap was ever going to clean it enough for his peace of mind.

“Do you have any food?”

“Food?  What kind of food?”

“ _People_  food.”

Hermann squinted.  “I do not keep _human meat_  in my refrigerator, no.”

“What?  No!  Not _people_  people food, like food that people eat.”

“I didn’t think your kind could eat anything other than human flesh.”

“Okay, look, I haven’t eaten anything -- or anyone -- in like ten years, so ‘my kind’--” he wiggled his fingers in the air, “--would really like a pizza right about now.”

He didn’t have pizza.  He did, however, have leftover macaroni from a meal he’d made the weekend before.  Newt, it seemed, wasn’t in the mood to be overly picky.  

He learned several things about zombies that night: they spoke, they were annoying, they could eat just about anything with ease, couldn’t actually digest any of it, and were rather superb at expelling the contents of their stomach in several directions and with alarming velocity.  If watching Newton dislodge his stuck eye had been disturbing, helping him fish his eyes out of a toilet full of partially digested macaroni was an experience that made Hermann deeply question his recent life choices.

**Author's Note:**

> Hermann's zombie-raising spell was just something I wrote then ran through Google translate to turn it into Latin because it sounded cooler. I'm almost positive it turned it into complete gibberish in the process and not actual Latin. I did, out of curiosity, translate it back into English afterward and one of the lines mistranslated as something like "rise and eat my dinner" which might explain the macaroni.
> 
> Hermann's feud with his dad is something I plan on elaborating on in the future. Hopefully before next Halloween, but you never know with me.


End file.
